THE number of unemployed has risen, according to the Government’s favoured measure of joblessness. The news will fuel Labour’s anxiety of a slip in the employment market in the run-up to the election.
The jobless total rose last December by 32,000 to 1.41 million, or 4.7 per cent of the population, based on the Labour Force Survey.
But on the separate claimant count measure, unemployment fell by 11,000 to 813,200, suggesting a rate of 2.6 per cent, the lowest unemployment rate for almost 30 years.
John Butler, of HSBC, said that the rise in unemployment registered by the Labour Force Survey (LFS) reflected fewer people classified as economically inactive. The inactivity rate dropped 0.2 per cent to 21.3 per cent.
The rise in joblessness appeared to be caused by an increase in young men out of work. Unemployment among men aged 18 to 24 rose by 29,000 last December, and by 43,000 over the year, even as joblessness declined overall.
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Ross Walker, of RBS Financial Markets, said that the economy was continuing to create jobs at a “healthy, if unspectacular pace”. The employment rate rose 0.1 percentage points in the three months to December and 0.3 percentage points over the year. He added: “There remain some possible weak spots — the fall in workforce jobs and the modest rise in LFS unemployment — but the underlying trends continue to look fairly resilient.”
Job vacancies rose by 2,000 last December and by 55,000 over the year.
Last month a survey of company payrolls showed employment declining for the first time since autumn 2001, suggesting that the job market might be worsening.